Golden anniversary: Marina High turns 50

Feb. 7, 2013

Updated Aug. 21, 2013 1:17 p.m.

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Family, friends, and graduates watch as their peers make their way to receiving their graduation certficates during the 2010 Marina High School graduation ceremony. DAVID LE, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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The Vikings, as pictured in Marina's 1968 yearbook. ASHER KLEIN, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Much has changed at Marina High School since it was founded in 1963 – even the name.

Those first two years, the students were called Huntington Beach-Marina Oilers because the city's older school needed to relocate for remodeling.

It wasn't until 1965 that the mascot became the Vikings, and the school's logo was only adopted in the '70s, according to Jeanne Ellis, who graduated with the first class in 1966.

"It was my class that had the opportunity to choose the new school colors, the school mascot, the pennants and the logos and what clubs were going to be called," Ellis said. "When we became seniors, we opened the doors for the Vikings for the first time. We owned it and we loved it."

There are just a few things that have stayed the same in 50 years of Marina life: the bowl in the center of campus where graduation has always been held and the Polaris M, a trident-looking letter at the heart of every logo and the badges Ellis said were given to active students.

"One thing that never has changed from the beginning is people's perception about the moat. We spent a lot of time trying to make it sound unique and a good thing, but when you've got a drainage ditch that covers two sides of your school, it's tough," said Ellis, who returned to Marina in 1996, serving as an assistant principal for 15 years. She said that the moat looks great these days.

Marina is honoring its legacy for the next nine months in a series of 50th anniversary celebrations. "Since the event is spanning two different school years, the end of this school year and the beginning of next, we're spreading it out so ... this graduating class can celebrate and the next can celebrate as well," said Assistant Principal Kevin Fairman, who's organizing the events.

The party kicked off Wednesday night at the second annual Marina Expo, an event to promote the school to prospective students and their parents. A retrospective put together by the school's video class was shown.

Plenty at the school will seem different to alumni of a certain age, from the remodeled gym to the repainted walls (Ellis said they used to be gray and looked like "brain matter").

Ellis said she spent half her time as an administrator chasing down truants. "It never was a problem when I was in high school because they'd kick your butt," she said.

That underlines another difference Ellis noticed between those first three years at Marina: a more consumerist relationship between parents and schools. "When I went to school, the school was right whether we were right or not and you had to do what the school expected," she said. "Now parents come in and say, you can't do that with my kid."

It's a difference in expectations for what school should provide, she explained, now that there are many more distractions in TV, movies, an easy car ride to Disneyland or the beach when cars used to be hard to come by.

The school has a reputation for having parents who want their kids to excel.

"Those kids who have parents who are very supportive of education, usually those kids do well because (the parents) expect it, they demand it," Ellis said. That's part of why she says 95 percent of Marina's teachers wouldn't leave the school if given the chance.

"I still have not 100 percent broken away and it's been two years" since she retired, Ellis said.

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